July 20, 2006
In the flood of Middle East war reports, one phrase caught my eye. A Hezbollah rocket had reached "the holy city of Nazareth".
We’re not supposed to ponder this too much, I suppose. They want us to think briefly of Jesus, curse perfidious Arabs and move on. But for me it brought back memories. I’ve met a few Nazarenes in my time, under two sets of very different circumstances.
One occasion was in a Beirut refugee camp. These were Palestinians driven from their Nazareth homes by the Zionists in 1948, and still languishing in exile decades later. Life was grim, but they welcomed us with smiles and tea, and spoke hopefully of their Palestinian revolution. Their families are probably still in those camps today, as Israeli bombers fly mercilessly overhead.
The other time was in Nazareth itself, where I met Jewish Israelis. They came from Australia and Russia. The Australians had stashes of vegemite, posted from Melbourne. The Russians had all set up stalls at the base of their high rise flats, offering themselves as watchmakers. How they could all make a living was a mystery. But they were a lot better off than people in the Beirut camps.
Here is one of those simple, screaming obscenities amidst the complexities of the Middle East conflict. If you’re Jewish and born in Melbourne or Moscow, you have the right to go to Israel. But Arab refugees born in Nazareth are banned from their home town, because Israel’s core ideology - Zionism - embodies a cancerous racism.
Cancer spreads. In 1967 Israel seized the West Bank and Sinai. Then Jewish settlements began to appear throughout the occupied territories. The Palestinians fought back with brave but outgunned militias; driven out of Jordan, they regrouped in Lebanon.
So not long after my visit to Beirut, Israel invaded that country. The initial rationale was to clear a zone in the country’s south, to stop radical militias threatening Israel’s security. Sound familiar? But once the tanks began to roll, the murderous onslaught continued on to Beirut. In the aftermath, Ariel Sharon gave the green light for massacres in the refugee camps. The ultimate aim was to crush the Arab resistance.
These aims failed. The PLO fighters shipped out of Beirut and Tripoli, but within a few years the first Intifada was underway on the West Bank. In Southern Lebanon, meanwhile, a new radical militia cut its teeth fighting the Israeli occupation: Hezbollah.
Now, despite the staggering, American-funded Israeli military might, it seems Hezbollah can land a missile on Nazareth. Israel can deal out death in ghastly proportions, yet still it finds no security. An aggressive state built on racism will know no peace. But neither will anyone else — until we put an end to it.